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You brought up something today that I wanted to talk about. You were reeling from the big government and pro-life/-death dissonance. What I wanted to say is, your framing is wrong.

If you can, check your local (big-gubbmint socialist) library for the book “The Price of Right” by Alicia Morgan. It’s a good book, but the author admits early on she has ADD, and is prone to distract*OOH, SHINY!

One of the early chapters is on psychological framing, and discusses some cognitive psychology work in two basic child-raising and morality frames, called “the Strict Father” and “the Nurturing Parent”. I would give the researcher’s name but my partner arranges the bookshelves by size, color, and symmetry. Please, just don’t ask.

Also, these should be thought of as archetypes, not absolutes. While parents tend to lean to one as a default behavior, human behavior is much more complex.

The Strict Father frame is based on rules and hierarchy. It uses the term “father” because it tends to be paternal and patriarchal. Tradition and conformity are very important. Society is a set of rules and laws, and the laws keep evil and chaos away. Ethics is based on reward and punishment, with punishment being very important. People are inherently bad, and the badness has to be restrained or punished out of them. Similarly, security of the State is thwarting and punishing evildoers. Withholding punishment is itself immoral, because that tacitly rewards evil. Similarly, failure is a punishment for sloth or indolence, and so the punishments of failure should not be withheld. This is the default frame of the conservative mindset.

The Nurturing Parent frame is based on a lateral collective society. It uses the term “parent” because it tends to minimize differences in the sexes, preferring equal cooperation. Society is a set of rules and goals, and collective cooperation maintains social harmony. Ethics is based on cultivating good behavior. Collective good and social cohesion is valued. People are inherently good, and the goodness should be encouraged by example and interaction. Similarly, the security of the State is cultivating strong relations. Punishment is shunned in favor of rehabilitation. Failure happens, and it is a community’s role to ensure random happenstance does not cripple its members. this is the default frame of the progressive mindset.

When dealing with the right, you have to remember that punishment *is* morality. Withholding punishment *is* immoral, because you are staying the hand that will stamp out evil. You really *can* kill all the evildoers, and the world will be a safer place.

Your cognitive dissonance (see what I did there?) is over their use of the terms “pro-life” and “pro-death penalty” and “pro-preemptive war”. What you fail to see is that they are all really the same thing.

“Pro-life” is making sure women get punished for letting their va-jay-jays go free-range. A woman’s hierarchical and traditional position is to be subservient to her husband and produce children for him. Getting pregnant out of wedlock means that she has chosen to place herself above her traditional place in society, and make her own rules. This is chaos that will erode society. Because it is her place to produce offspring, she must be forced to deal with the consequences of having sex when she felt like it. If everyone made decisions like her, society would fall apart, therefore there should be punishments for making decisions like her. (This actually fall neatly in line with Jewish law of conformity in the Old Testament. Kosher laws are against blending. If you look at when a leper is unclean, it is until the scars completely cover him. He is only impure when his skin is mixed.) Liberals want to withhold punishment from such women, which means liberals want to encourage such evil and make all the women in the world hedonist sluts and end the Pax Conservita of society. (And, no that’s not an official term, but I had three years of Latin in high school, and like the play on Pax Roma.)

Pro-death penalty is also a matter of punishment. Someone does something bad, they should be punished. Because laws and traditions are not to be questioned, if more blaah people end up in jail, it must therefore be a moral failure in blaah people. To question the law just isn’t done. By withholding the death penalty, liberals want to tacitly encourage terrible behavior, and thus end the Pax Conservita of society.

Pro-war is also a matter of punishment. Bad people must be punished, even killed, before their badness can come here and be enacted. Killing all the bad people is a noble ambition. When all the bad people are killed, the world will be a better place. Liberals want to coddle evildoers and let them flourish, and thus end the Pax Conservita of society.

Anyway, I recommend the book, even if you only read that one chapter. Weird at it may sound, now a lot of weird right-wing bullshit has an internal logic when I see it. It is also why so many debates on an individual level tend to fail, as framing is what allows ideas to stick in or fall through our thoughts and perceptions.

The suffrage movement was suffused with racism. Black suffrage marchers were at the back of the parade, and there were women’s groups that would not march with “the negras”. (Look up Sojourner Truth and her “Ain’t I a Woman?” poem.) One of the reasons that conservatives were swayed is because of the influx of voting Catholics, Blacks, and Asians in the West. Allowing women to vote would double the number of WASP voters and thus keep the undesirables in check. Also, women voting became a “states’ rights” issue, and the states out west were attracting residents by allowing women to vote. (Again, this kept the Asian and Native American vote in check.)

It’s my understanding that the British colonies allowed women to vote for essentially this reason. Women would be more amenable to live in a place where they could vote, and having more white northwestern Europeans voting helped keep the colonial governments in power.

When you put it like that… it almost makes women’s suffrage sound icky. 😉

Stupid, horrible polycotton fabs! They are ruining the make up of American fabrics all across this country. Once you allow this sort of mixing, what next, cotton-bamboo blends? Silk-wool blends? Clearly we are getting into bestiality now, since both silk and wool are animal byproducts… you see how it leads to this slippery, slippery slope.

Ok, PLEASE don’t go crazy on me! That’s not the context in which those comments were made!

The podcast had the discussion of women’s suffrage in the US and Australia. Cecil commented on women gained the right to vote in Australia in the early 1900’s.

My comments are historically accurate. What I did not say but probably should have is that the women’s suffrage movement in the US DID begin in the 1800’s. It went national in the 1900’s, but in the larger cities it had been a struggle for generations. Suffrage was at a stalemate for generation after generation.

Conservatives sometimes brag that they got on board with suffrage, and that is how the law was passed. However, the appeal that finally reached them was racism. It is a sad truth that the suffrage movement in the US did pass when it did because of foreshadowing of what would become the civil rights movement, as well as a more immediate influx of Irish and Mediterranean Europeans, particularly Italian (I believe due to tuber blights causing famine) on the East Coast, and a steady influx of Asians and culturally mixed migration to the newer states in the Southwest.

As absolutely horrible as it sounds, what pushed past the stalemate *when it did* and allowed women’s suffrage to pass *the year it did* was an appeal to racists and anti-Catholic sentiments of conservatives. Fear of “those people” voting is what caused a block of conservatives to suddenly shift towards the progressive cause and force the vote when it was. Before that, the split was largely along progressive/conservative lines. If that had not happened, in all likelihood women’s suffrage would have happened within a generation or two. From all I’ve read the same factors that lead women into the workforce in WW2 would have also necessitated women’s suffrage. Generational shift and wars would have made it happen before the Civil rights movement.

You can see this more clearly in the party line split. The majority of the yea’s on the suffrage vote were Republicans. This is back in the day when the Republicans were urban industrialists who though displays of religion in government were not proper. Most of the nay’s were Democrats, which at the time were the party of the rural, the religious, and the uneducated, and ultimately the Dixiecrats. Women’s suffrage was fought by the party that had ties to the Cross and the Klan. These were the same people that fought women owning property or using birth control. They are ruled by fear, and ultimately it was fear that prodded a block of them to move in the right direction.

So, given everything that has gone on, my comment about its final passing having a bit of ick to it was very bad timing, and for that I apologize. I am not trying to degrade suffrage, and I know women were attacked for marching. My comment was that the timing was ultimately affected by an appeal to racism, which is an icky taint to politics and just plain sad. That is also true of the British Colonial governments. They did not let women vote in 1902 because of a sense of enlightenment. They wanted to make sure enough white people were voting, even if that meant women voting, to make sure the colonial governments could maintain power.

Sadly, racism and sexism have been nearly as powerful political forces in US history as greed. The blogger Bluegal made the excellent comment: “You don’t have to be racist [sexist, homophobic, dominionist, xenophobic] yourself, if society does it for you.”

And, yes, I’d be happy to debate, defend, and if proven wrong, retract and apologize for anything I’ve said.

Although, if you think a long angry screed would be a better place to start, I would completely understand. The “All your vagina are belong to us!” meme that is going around the conservative ecosystem is pretty disgusting. Sometimes being forced to put raw anger to proper spelling and grammar will give a sudden and surprising moment of clarity, and putting it to words can be empowering. If you feel better after, even better. If you suddenly decide, “Fuck this looser Mike.K. fucking fuck on the internet! I’m writing this to MY SENATOR!” even better still!

Amanda,
I would also say this about the women’s movement today. I believe this was originally from Salon, and I’m sorry I can’t source it:

Abortion laws are for women who’s family can’t afford an airplane ticket.

One could argue it’s more class based than gender based. Affluent families can send their daughters to Atlanta or Phoenix. Someone like Meghan McCain can charter a private jet to Norway and get a late-term abortion on demand. The laws affect the poor disproportionately, and that means there are inequalities by race, education, and socio-economic class of birth.

Personally, I think our first priority should be a good education system and our second should be a strong safety net and healthcare. When people are educated and no longer fear themselves or their children dying from the flu, that will mitigate the fear the conservatives use to mobilize their base and we can handle many of these other issues more quickly and intelligently.

As long as fear can be used so easily to motivate the conservative base, most civil rights issues (in which I include healthcare and infrastructure) will be long and difficult fights.

For the last two weeks I’ve been banished to the overnight shift at my work. Luckily, I’ve found your podcast to be the virtual equivalent of Red Bull. It makes me laugh out loud (apparently a very disconcerting thing for my co-workers. Meh.) and more importantly it makes me think. Keep up the good work, and keep questioning everything.

Just to be pedantic, any location North of the Arctic Circle (~66.5 deg N), or South of the Antarctic Circle (~66.5 deg S) will get at least one day when the sun doesn’t set on the Summer Solstice. The further north, the more days the sun doesn’t set. I was in Bodo Norway one summer in the 70’s and stood on a hillside and watched the sun not set at midnight. Awesome. For me anyway.
Wiki has a more detailed description at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Circle
The other side of the coin, in the winter, the sun doesn’t rise. 🙂